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Thursday, May 21, 2015

History According to Jim, Vol. 1, No. 2.

As I prepare to develop a completely radicalized mobile and flipped American History to 1865 course for the summer semester I am looking at what I've used in previous semesters. What will I keep and what will I discard? Since this course is flipped and uses mobile technology I have to spend time teaching them how they will learn and how to use the devices and applications that we will be using during the semester. After that my first actual lesson is about history itself which leads me to the topic of this post. What is History?

I am going to break this into a three week long series of posts. The answer to the question is quite complex while also pretty simple. History is everything that has gone before us. Easy answer, right? The problem is in the next questions. Why study history? How do you study history? So much for the easy part. So, let's tackle the first question which is what is History?

Herodotus-Father of History

Derives from Greek word ἱστορία - historia, meaning
"inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation.” It is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. This video clip with music from Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" is a nice collage to get students into a thinking mode about history. The video goes on to discuss sources and other historical concepts which makes it a great fit for this first part about what history is.

I then move to a quote from Sam Wineburg's outstanding book, Historical Thinking.

1"For the narcissist sees the
world-both the past and the present-in his own image. Mature historical
understanding teaches us to do the opposite: to go beyond our own image, to go
beyond our brief life, and to go beyond the fleeting moment in human history
into which we have been born. History educates (“leads outward” in the Latin)
in the deepest sense. Of the subjects in the secular curriculum, it is the best
at teaching those virtues once reserved for theology—humility in the fact of
our limited ability to know, and awe in the face of the expanse of history."

I I then use a quote by John Lewis Gaddis.

1"History 'dethrones' us from
our original position at the center of the universe. It requires us to see
ourselves as part of a much larger human story. When we view the world this
way, we come face-to-face with our own smallness, our own insignificance."

The two quotes really dive into the concept of history. It tends to shock them a bit because they see themselves as the center of their universe. History sees nothing as the center, least of all a student. For more quotes by historians on this subject, I refer you to my former professor's website, Steve Kreis and "The History Guide" and his page on the subject.

It really does come down to the fact that we are relatively insignificant to the history we study. Yet, like Howard Zinn says in this photo, we are all agents of change through our insignificant acts. I find history to be a paradox that thrills and captivates me. I can only hope my students can begin to approach this paradox. In order to do that I need to engage them with history. We will continue with that topic in next week's History According to Jim.